The Ebon Ward: Episode 6
"There is nothing innately wrong with how many people are killed by the party." - Twitch description for the 6th episode of Ebon Ward Episode Synopsis At the Verger mansion the party confronts a secret vampire and Dia puts on a very cursed mask. Summary The party regroups at Grabby Graveyard in their respective groups of Maze, Suino & Jasper, and Dia & Gnash. They question Rufus and discover his connection to Toter Tobbles and someone in the Verger mansion who has been dealing with Toter. They strongarm Rufus into adopting the disguise of "Conroy" and travelling with them to the mansion to identify the individual who he and Killstain had been dealing with. Castien greets the group at the door and they are escorted to a waiting Eugene and Evelyn in the dining room. The party engage in pleasant conversation with the Vergers over breakfast brunch, with no reaction from "Conroy" until Heiqen enters the room. After some handwriting forensics, the party confronts Heiqen about his shady dealings. Heiqen immediately reacts to the accusation by activating a lantern that spawns shadowy figures to surround the party. The Shadows make quick work of killing "Conroy" and incapacitating both Eugene and Evelyn as the party acts to defend the Vergers and themselves. Heiqen then casts "dominate person" on Maze, incidentally revealing himself to be a vampire. Maze turns to attack Dia under Heiqen's orders. Shocking everyone, Dia proposes "kissplomancy" - kissing Maze right on the lips to invoke the power of love/friendship and snap him out of his trance (mechanically: giving him another Will save). This works, and Maze instead turns his javelins on Heiqen. Seeing that the party has defeated more than half of the Shadows at this point, Heiqen attempts to retrieve his lantern, and on failing this makes a retreat into the kitchen where he is intercepted by Jasper. Maze joins the chase, and there is a brief interaction where Heiqen comments on the implied significance of the broach that Maze picked up in the Belgrin Veredis Ruins and has been wearing on his cloak since then. Heiqen then retreats upstairs, locking the door at the top of the stairs behind him. By a stroke of luck, Jasper had on hand the set of keys that they had taken from Castien the previous day, and easily unlocks the door to continue the chase. Jasper and Maze immediately pursue Heiqen into Eugene's study, Dia follows after picking up the lantern dropped by Heiqen, and Suino and Gnash also follow after finishing off the Shadows. After a scuffle the runes around the Arcanoplasm are again disrupted, and Dia occupies herself with again repairing them. Being cornered by the entire party, Heiqen grabs a book from the study and jumps out of the window. Maze jumps right out after Heiqen and catches up with him to sever his arm to end the combat. Gnash and Suino also head outside to help secure Heiqen. Meanwhile, Dia finishes fixing the runes and drifts over to investigate the Platinum Mask that Bevis had told them to retrieve. Disturbingly, she hears a voice from the mask and is compelled to pick it up and wear it. Sensing that something is wrong, Jasper intercepts Dia and is also influenced by the mask - resulting in a magic-fueled scuffle where the two of them try to take the mask from each other. Dia is the victor and manages to put the mask on her face, upon which it latches on and begins to melt to her flesh, with metal dripping from around the edges of the mask and collecting on the floor around her feet. The party members outside hear Jasper scream in horror and Maze jumps back into the room. Thinking quickly, Maze does the only logical thing in this situation and moves to kiss Dia on the face and give her the will to resist the voice from the mask. It's not as effective this time, but what does work is dragging Dia closer to the Arcanoplasm to weaken the mask's power enough that Maze and Suino can pry it off of her face. Badly burned, but safe again, Dia passes out. With the crisis averted, the party turns their attention back to checking on Eugene and interrogating Heiqen. Heiqen confirms that "The Good Doctor" and "the lady in red" are the same person, but is otherwise not very forthcoming with information. Eugene shows a surprising amount of enthusiasm for torturing and eventually killing Heiqen (though maybe not so surprising considering the general aura of menace that surrounds him). Retrieving the book that Heiqen tried to take, they discover that it was the encoded book that the party had retrieved from the Veredis Ruins and that Maze had given to Eugene to study, which they now decide to take back upon seeing its significance. From context, Suino deduces that Heiqen was working with Sebastian Verger on some alchemical project for The Good Doctor, and their next move should be to find and question Sebastian. The episode winds down with the party searching Heiqen's possessions for any useful information. Maze takes a gold watch off Heiqen's body. In Heiqen's room they find papers and a booklet in a locked box including 30 pages of notes on Elementals, a schedule of meetings between Heiqen and Totor Tobbles representatives, and a list of alchemical ingredients including golem cores. Maze also finds a silver dagger, and wonders if it would make a good third present for Dia, along with the Elemental notes, and vampire arm that he cut off of Heiqen. After a few more minutes of searching the party talks to Castien and comes to realize that Sebastian might actually have been in the house this whole time, so while Dia rests the other four Ebon Ward members group up to confront him. Appearances * Ebon Ward Party (Maze, Suino, Jasper, Dia, Gnash) * Rufus "Conroy" * Castien * Eugene Verger * Evelyn Verger * Heiqen * The Platinum Mask (first appearance) Notes & trivia * The workings of the shadow lantern remains a mystery as of Episode 66, as the party has never investigated it in-universe after it was picked up by Dia. Players have stated that they forgot that they had it for the longest time, and now that they are aware of it again, they have not had any opportunity/reason to look into it further. * Some details about the platinum mask: In addition to burning the flesh of the wearer, it also begins encasing the person in mercury-like metal starting from the feet upwards. It was also described that when Dia's flesh was nicked with a knife she began to bleed black. * Throughout the episode, Lamp guesses/jokes that Heiqen must have a belt of tumbling for his Acrobatics to be so high. He doesn't have one on him, but later Gnash rolls a nat. 20 on perception and finds a belt of tumbling under Heiqen's bed as a reward. Category:Ebon Ward Category:Ebon Ward Episodes